Things this year are really different; the second foreign teacher finished his contract in late February and wasn't replaced since my school no longer meets the guidelines for having to NETs.Now I am all alone in the office, and rather than teaching two grades, I'm now in charge of three, meaning one grade all together doesn't get a native teacher. I'm teaching grades 4, 5, and 6. Because I teach three grades, I only see each grade once a week and I've already noticed that bonding with them is going to be hard. Luckily, my new 5th graders are the same ones I taught during 4th grade last year so they're familiar with me, and seemed excited to have me as a teacher again. I also have three co-teachers now instead of two, and one of my grade 6 classes I teach with a homeroom teacher.
Two of my coteachers are the same from last term, and we are getting along really well. I feel like at the beginning perhaps they were cold/indifferent towards me because I was just another foreigner who isn't really that dedicated to the job, but hopefully by now I've shown to them that I really do care about the students and I want to do a good job so they've started to trust me more. My third co-teacher was a grade 6 homeroom teacher last year, and this is her first time teaching English in a long time. Her English level isn't as high as my other two CTs but we can still understand each other, and she is really sweet. Overall, I feel really lucky to have gotten the school I'm in because even with the language barrier, they're all super friendly and kind to me. I've heard bad stories of mean principals or VPs, and I can honestly say that mine go out of their way to make sure I'm comfortable. This semester I'm going to make a conscious effort to learn more Korean and try to socialize more with the other staff rather than eating and dashing, or staying shut in my office all afternoon. I feel the reason I don't try to talk to the other staff or my VP is because I feel guilty that I haven't learned more Korean, and they probably don't approach me because they're nervous of their English so there's definitely barriers we both need to work on.
It's finally starting to warm up in Seoul now, last weekend it was even warm enough to only wear a thin jacket and go to the park, and go on a hike the next day! There's a rumor floating around that schools typically ask if we want to renew whenever the weather starts getting nice, so I'm expecting it to happen any minute, but I'm still not entirely sure as to what I'll do; I've always been bad at making decisions.
A few photos from my most recent hike: we originally headed off towards Mt Achasan, but it ended up only taking about 40 minutes and wasn't challenging enough, so we kept going onto Mt Yongmasan. It's very clear that Hiking is Korea's national pass time since the minute we stepped out of the subway station there were tons of people decked out in their hiking gear; we actually didn't know where to go once we left the station, so we ended up following the parade in colorful hikers and ended up at the right place. Hopefully I will go on more hikes as the weather improves and will be able to make a post solely on hiking as I think it's a big cultural experience that everyone should experience at least once. Hiking in Korea is not the same as hiking back in the U.S. for sure!
parade of hikers |
Seoul from the peak to Yongmasan |
Seoul from Achasan & snack time |
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